How Safeway Saved Millions On Healthcare Benefits?

A case in example is the Safeway experiment.
In 2011 Safeway Company instituted reference pricing. They told employees that reimbursement for lab testing would be capped at the 60th percentile of regional prices. Any amount beyond that–was on them. What happened to Safeway’s spending on laboratory tests after the policy went into effect, versus the unchanged spending is illustrative of the power of incentivization.
By the third year of the program, Robinson and colleagues found that the average amount spent per laboratory test by Safeway and its employees was about 32% less than the amount spent by controls. The 3-year initiative was associated with $2.57 million less spent on laboratory testing, including $1.05 million less inpatient out-of-pocket spending.